Rick Groen

Soderbergh has bathed the Depression in lovely, golden-brown hues - so lovely, so golden, that the flick seems to be unfolding from inside the delicious core of a burnished bran muffin. [20 August 1993]

Bad summer films, full of furious hype and signifying nothing, are hardly exceptional these days, nor is the sound they typically make: the dull scrape of a culture hitting rock bottom. Yet this one seems uniquely bad; this one is a threshold-breaker with a different sound, the crack of rock-bottom giving way to a whole deeper layer of magma.

There, in its midst, stands a freeze-dried Arthur -- stripped of his legend, shivering in the cold and wondering, like the rest of us, where in hell the magic went.

Apparently, somebody thought it was time for a remake. Clearly, somebody was dead wrong.

A plot so thin you could filter coffee through it.

C'mon, in matters of haunted-house inhabitation, settling into an ex-mortuary is like renting above a dentist's office -- ashen faces and ghastly screams come with the territory.

Label this one a howler, and add a postscipt to the sequel: shoo Fly II, go forth and don't multiply. [11 Feb 1989]

It is a disappointment - just intermittently engaging, and lacking the cohesion of his best efforts, it seems less a fully realized feature than a film-school foible. [30 Aug 1996]

When the plot isn't lagging, it displays holes sufficiently gaping to accommodate a whole squadron of Firefoxes. [19 June 1982]

Because the society in Menace II Society is boxed in sociologically, the picture (for all its strengths) is boxed in esthetically. Already, this genre is beginning to seem as much a victim as the victims it portrays.

Outrageous Fortune is a genuine waste of talent (Midler, Long and Coyote all have it) and time (the standard 90 minutes' worth). [30 Jan 1987]

The problem here isn't how the figures look; rather, it's what they do and say -- the story is lame and the dialogue no better.

A three-hour oration, rambling and familiar and repetitive, during which director Oliver Stone uses the assassination of John Kennedy as an elaborate pretext for delivering a dull sermon. [20 Dec 1991]

Definition of redundant: A formulaic Hollywood pic that calls itself Déjà Vu.

The plot makes the casting look inspired. More than inane, it's offensive. [14 Dec 1982]

What Happens in Vegas should damn well have stayed in Vegas.

A cinematic homage as flawed as its subject. Flawed, yet with a peculiar fascination of its own -- what we have is a genuine artist paying sincere tribute to an unapologetic mediocrity, and stooping awkwardly to the task.

Gosh, what to say about House of 1000 Corpses? That it's about 999 too many, for starters. Then again, in a picture where the body count is the whole point and the only purpose, carping about the math rather misses the mark.

The film preaches the gospel of unpredictable change, of ironic metamorphosis, of a psychological ebb and flow from love to lust, hope to despair, good to evil. But if the message is fluid, the medium is static at best and chaotic at worst - there's very little controlled motion in this picture. [19 June 1992]

FALLING Down is a nasty bit of business, a two-faced manipulator that condones what it pretends to condemn. Cluttered and often downright silly, it's not much of a movie, but it is a fascinating sign of the times - a litmus test for every prejudice and fear harboured by the white middle class in ailing, urban America. [26 Feb 1993, p.C6]

There are a few laughs at the start of This Is the End, and a couple more at the end of This is the End. As for the endless middle, it’s middling.

Barely dusted off, the humourless stuff is served up straight - damned if it isn't a Hillbillies homage. [19 Oct 1993]

Strange Days, then, isn't nearly strange enough. Once the premise has lost its promise, and Fiennes's brave attempts at characterization are sacrificed to pseudo-dazzle, everything appears awfully humdrum and, yes, distinctly dated. So dated that in the crowded and pat climax, as the ball drops on the year 2000, all that's missing is Dick Clark himself - damn, it's out with the old and in with the older. [13 Oct 1995]

That's the allure of the genre. Succeed, and you're artful, thoughtful, and popular all at the same time. But fail, and you're the King of New York. As failures go, this is typical enough, smugly dividing the world into good gangsters and bad ones. [9 Nov 1990]

Scrape off its grimy exterior, and it too is a fairy tale, but one with ambitions of realism, one that tries to co-exist in our world, one that pretends to be something it isn't. Frankie & Johnny ends up lost in limboland, stumbling onto a whole new genre - call it kitchen-sink unrealism. [11 Oct 1991]

After a great start, Wolfgang Petersen's intelligent medical thriller is infected by some nasty germs, resulting in the all-too-common Actionitis. [10 Mar 1995]

The cast is equally strong (especially McDonnell), but the vast subject and the shifting settings force Kasdan all over the map. [10 Jan 1992]

On the whole, the film is content to lumber awkwardly between the condemned man on death row and the intrepid reporter on his save-a-life beat -- there's about as much rhythm in the style as there is sense in the plot.

Dragonfly has more plot than a figure-skating competition, and just about as much credibility.

Not just bad, but weirdly, fascinatingly bad.

Just when you think it's going to rollick, this lazy movie rolls over and plays dead When Honeymoon's ends, it's not a moment too soon. [28 Aug 1992]

Meant to explore anger, all this picture does is manufacture it.

Dumb and Dumber 'n the hood.

HAT in the name of artsy pretension do we have here? That Arizona Dream is a nightmare is beyond dispute - it's the sort of murky, symbol-laden trap that European directors often fall into when they cross the pond to take on the entire social stratum of the United States. The culprit in question is Emir Kusturica - Yugoslavian born, Czech trained, and now American buffaloed. This thing makes The Red Desert look coherent. [19 Nov 1994]

God forgive me, but I worship the Bad Dialogue Fairy -- he gets me through these endless nights.

2 Days in New York plays like 2 years in Attica. You don't watch this movie so much as serve it out, a light comedy doled out as a heavy sentence.

Nominally set in some rural American backwater, The Neon Bible is a hellishly muddled reprint of Davies' personal canon - muddled enough to turn all his past virtues into present transgressions. [19 Apr 1996]

Using a kidnapping plot to call up some old-fashioned suspense, it doesn't even get a dial tone.

In the final frames, and the final analysis, Alien gets the worst of both worlds - it's boring and it's messy. The title may be "cubed," but the movie looks awfully square. [22 May 1992]

Unwilling to offend, the scribes have committed the greatest offence of all - they've neglected to tell a story, airbrushing out anything remotely dramatic.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make heads or tails of this Byzantine thing. [22 May 1996]

By then, the lofty ambitions can't disguise the sad reality - it's long, it's cluttered, and it's trite.

Clint has a script. Actually, Clint has too much script, one of those schematic by-the-number jobs that telegraphs its every pitch.

This is just another generic war movie of the kind that revels in combat's greater glories. You know the type - the camaraderie that never quite rings true, the plot that never once makes sense. In short, the whole bombs-bursting- in-air, truth-through-the-night jive. [21 Oct 1988]

This story, like many of Towne's own, does not come with a happy ending. Or beginning, for that matter, because it's almost immediately clear that Ask the Dust bites the dust -- his dream movie is stillborn.

Can't find it in your vast collection of Fleming first editions? Not to worry. Seems the producers - a.k.a. the Cubby Broccoli Cottage Industry - have run plumb out of titles. And everything else too. [14 July 1989]

Instead, you get a nominal character study that boasts a single mighty performance and one nifty scene; alas, both performance and scene exist in a narrative vacuum - the plot is non-existent and the pace makes the ice age seem hasty.

The Arthurian legend has received a wide variety of treatments over the years, but this safe, sanitized American version drains the juice smack out of a notorious romantic triangle. [07 Jul 1995]

With barely a laugh to be found, Confetti takes the "mock" right out of the mockumentary, and you can guess what's left. Yep, a Umentary, a brand new genre best defined by what it's not -- not real like a doc, not funny like a mock, not this thing or that thing or much of anything.

The net result is a few shaky laughs and one unwavering sensation -- that The Terminal is interminable.

The visual big top is the scourging and the crucifixion -- again and again, Gibson returns to the blood-letting. Again and again, we're exposed to the clinical repetition of a single act, until an alleged act of passion comes to seem boring and passionless. Is that not a definition of pornography?

Simply put, Touch dies, with nary a resurrective hand in sight. [14 Feb 1997, p.C5]

This is an Affair to forget. [21 Oct 1994]

Yes, from "Blonde" to "Bunny," it's abundantly evident that the two scribes have mastered, truly mastered, the serious art of self-plagiarism.

From its eccentric score (a mix of spaghetti western and funky blues) to its bizarre casting (ex-wrestlemanaic Roddy Piper in the lead role), the flick leaves us off-balance and guessing. By the time we figure out there's not much to guess at, the credits roll by and the jig is up. [5 Nov 1988]

Surviving Picasso is flat-out dull, hanging like a K Mart print in a suburban mall - a testament to Merchant-Ivory's blew-it period. [20 Sep 1996]

The ads give this a Lamborghini label, but under the hood, it's just a clunker that putzes along like a suburban sedan. [26 Aug 1989]

Watching Attack of the Clones is like getting rapped on the head with a rubber mallet -- no lasting damage (I pray and hope), but bad enough to bring on an acute bout of dizziness and disorientation. Definitely do not operate heavy machinery after viewing -- this behemoth is brutal.

The film doesn't work, it ain't charming.

Made of Honor should come with a bar code and a Wal-Mart display - this isn't a movie, it's a commodity. The generic brand is the romantic comedy, and the manufacturer's material of choice is recycled plastic, smoothly glued together to assure the consumer that the purchase is risk-free and thoroughly predictable.

Some films, like some people, wear their artsy pretensions on their sleeve, and there really isn't much going on beneath – it's just a posturing armband wrapped around a plain arm. Welcome, then, to the emptiness of Mister Lonely, a movie that goes to extraordinary lengths to say ordinary things.

Baby Boom has the fluffy amiability of an innocuous sitcom. In their rightful place on the shrunken sets of the small screen, its teeny characters would seem comfortably at home. But blown up to feature dimensions, they betray their flimsy origins, looking thin and transparent, just a bunch of under-considered ideas decked out in over-sized finery. [10 Oct 1987]

What we have here is a romp, a funny romp at times, with a clear satiric intent and the expected quota of outrageous style - likable enough, yes, but a rather flimsy thing, a zany fest with its mind on cruise control. [17 June 1994]

Damned if those dual spoilsports, the gladiatorial director Ridley Scott reteamed with his portly star Russell Crowe, haven't drained every drop of merriment right out of the myth.

Film encyclopedias may beg to differ, the Cahiers du Cinéma might correct me, but, as far as your humble correspondent knows, Wanderlust is the first mainstream movie ever to star a Floppy Prosthetic Penis.

Steve Miner is no Carpenter. A directing veteran of the Friday the 13th saga (parts II and III, in case you care), he's a plodder who favours long, dull buildups to short, dull climaxes -- it's slaughter by the numbers.

Blowing up bad guys, swearing, and lots of cliches makes the The Last Boy Scout a must to miss. [16 Dec 1991]

Apparently pitched somewhere between a farce and a fable, this flick is neither. Just foolish. And frustrating. And, mostly, damned annoying.

As you watch -- no, endure -- this flattened-out spectacle, there's really nothing worth pondering save for a single thought: What a difference a director makes.

This picture breaks through the limits and goes way beyond the pale -- it seems to enjoy irking us for the sheer hell of it.

Fear strikes out in slasher flick This movie is laced with enough gratuitous bloodshed and reactionary zeal to warm the heart of a Montana militiaman. [12 Apr 1996]

Only read the bottom line of the accountants' review, after your generic masterpiece has gone the distance from theatrical release to video stores to the nethermost regions of the cable dial. If the accountants' judgment proves kind, head to the bank and feel free to enjoy precisely what you've denied so many others – a really good laugh.

Growing-up films are bad enough without a shameless all-girl rip off of Stand By Me. [20 Oct 1995]

Falls somewhere on that aesthetic scale between mediocre and flat-out bad.

The whole d--- thing can be summed up in three little words: yo ho hum.

Runaway is a Dinky Toy of a film: tiny, shiny, and about half as well-made. [15 Dec 1984]

Over on the aliens side, it's hard to make out faces, but there's no doubt about their place of origin: These slimy, growling, bug-eyed and distinctly non-scary things are straight from central casting.

[Law] talks straight to the camera like the young Michael Caine, but this time our hunk has got zilch to say. That's because a bastard's candour is off-limits in today's politically correct market — it just wouldn't be polite.

It's just a shrunken case of large-screen aspirations wedded to a small-screen mentality. [22 May 1992]

As always in Emmerich's rollicking Armageddons, the cannon speaks with an expensive bang, while the fodder gets afforded nary a whimper. Of course, that's just part of disaster's simple recipe: Blow us up, then blow us off.

Blind Date is a screwball comedy bereft of both a brain and a heart. Instead, it's all muscle and reflex, the conditioned kind good only for simple movements made in slapstick fashion, over and over and over and out. [27 Mar 1987]

Ready To Wear is certainly a disappointment, if not an outright flop. [27 Dec 1994]

No less laughable is the ending, where Ritchie neatly reflects today's prevailing attitude -- that audiences can't be trusted to handle a hint of ambiguity, but can live happily with flat-out stupidity.

On his own, Dangerfield is still a buoyant presence. But the cliche tells us that movie-making is a collaborative exercise, and the price for Easy Money must be paid. Ultimately, Captain Rodney goes down with his film and sinks without a trace. [20 Aug 1983]

It wants to make an important political statement, which might have been dandy if it had anything remotely cogent to say.

The weak plot means that the picture is governed totally by its gadgetry, the equivalent of those James Bond sequels that limp awkwardly from one showoff sequence to the next. [10 May 1991]

Non-existent direction, inane plot, inflated acting. [30 Sep 1987]

Bad Teacher should be a hoot. But it isn't. Love the theory here, hate the practice.

The countdown begins with the first negative integer — an amped-up score that overpowers the proceedings like a bad band at a high-school dance.

Now, forcibly deported to Chicago and peopled with American stars, the same story is huffed and puffed and squeezed into an entirely different cultural context. Guess what? Sayonara sushi, hello turkey.

There's obviously a huge appetite for humour this broad, and I wish I shared it. Instead, like a picky vegetarian at a Texas barbecue, I felt out of place, hungry, and a little sad. Not altogether different, perhaps, from a certain British actor on a seedy Sunset Strip. [14 July 1995]

With the performers given zilch to perform, the result is a picture that's all chassis and no engine, or, in the parlance of the genre, a bunch of pointy hats in search of a transporting broomstick.

In its nearly two-hour running time, in its always lugubrious pace, in its almost complete absence of laughs, The Prince & Me is a comedy that plays like a tragedy. No stricken bodies, though, unless you count the ones in the audience slumped back in their seats -- perchance they slept.

Herbie without the herb has never been my cup of tea.

To divulge the plot would spoil the experience -- you'll be shocked to discover, and maybe even surprised to learn, just how lame the damn thing really is.

Do we at least perk up during the ol' gunfight at the O.K. Corral, or the vacant lot at Fremont Street, or wherever the hell it did take place? Sorry. Kasdan never was an action director, and he clearly hasn't gone to school for this flick. Bang, bang, I'm dead, you're not, next scene - I've seen livelier shoot-outs at a soccer match. [24 Jun 1994, p.D1]

Where the hell is the movie?

Call me Grumpy, but this seems less an adaptation than a random assault.